There is a type of hook and loop tape known as Velcro.RTM. that serves as a convenient means for joining two pieces of material together temporarily, but sufficiently well so that they will remain joined in spite of considerable force tending to slide them apart. However, they can relatively easily be separated by peeling one piece from the other. Velcro.RTM. consists of base tape material to which small, resilient, plastic hooks are firmly joined so as to extend outwardly from one surface of the base material. The hooks are arranged in rows perpendicular to the length of the base material and are small enough and close enough together in both the length and width directions of the tape so that there are lots of hooks, even in a small patch of Velcro.RTM. tape. When these hooks are pressed against the surface of a piece of cloth, they hook onto the threads or fibers of that material and hold on so firmly that the cloth cannot be slide relative to the tape without the use of a very high force. A patch of such tape sewn on the surface of one edge of a jacket, for example, will engage the juxtaposed surface of the other edge of the jacket and will hold those two edges together as well as if one had a button and the other a buttonhole. Yet the two edges can be separated with only moderate force if one of them is peeled away from the other.
In such tape, the hooks are normally restricted to the central part of the base material, leaving narrow regions free of hooks along the edges of the base material. The base material usually has a width in the range of about 12.5 mm. to about 50 mm., although the material can be narrower or wider than that typical range. The patches of tape to be sewn onto the surface of a first piece of material typically have a length of about 12.5 mm. to about 100 mm., although, as in the case of the width, the length can be outside of this typical range. Thus, when such tape is cut into small lengths, or patches, their rectangular dimensions are typically between about 12.5.times.12.5 mm. and about 50.times.100 mm.
One convention that will be followed in referred to these patches in the following description is that the dimension referred to as the width of the patch is the width dimension of the tape from which that patch is cut. The length of the patch is perpendicular to the width and is thus measured along the longitudinal direction of the tape. As a result, a patch may have a length smaller than its width, which is not the way one customarily refers to the dimensions of rectangles.
In the sewing industry it has been common to cut patches of the tape to the proper dimensions and to furnish the sewing machine operator with a box of such pre-cut patches. The operator separates one patch at a time from the others in the box, places the separated patch, together with the material onto which it is to be sewn, in the sewing location of a suitable sewing machine, and attaches the patch to the other material by forming a suitable pattern of stitches. In the case of a small patch, that pattern may simply be a row of stitches or a bar tack, and, whatever the pattern, there are many makes of sewing machines that will automatically form the desired pattern.
Although a single pattern of such tape can be extracted from a box of such patches more easily than that same patch could be peeled away from the surface of a piece of soft material, the separation of one patch from the others and the placement of the patch in the proper orientation in the sewing location and with the correct surface facing upward requires considerable dexterity and attention to the work, as well as a measurable amount of time. As a result, businesses that do that work would very much like to have some automatic means for feeding one of the patches at a time into the sewing location and with the proper surface of the patch facing up.